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The school of Precotto, which was titled to Antonio Rosmini, in an image of the time |
| And in today's image that unfortunately highlights its negligence in maintenance |
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The school of Precotto
That morning, in addition to the school of Gorla, the school in the nearby Precotto district was also hit, but it had better luck; the children, though more numerous than Gorla, managed to reach the shelter below before the bombs began to explode. Also in this case one of the bombs hit the school building, but miraculously the structure did not collapse. The parish priest Don Carlo Porro together with some parents gave the first rescue operations to save the students.
Only two janitors lost their lives together with a father, Mr. Lecchi, overwhelmed by the collapse of the stairs leading to the shelter, but by now the children had all saved themselves.
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The school of Precotto, which was titled to Antonio Rosmini, in an image of the time |
| And in today's image that unfortunately highlights its negligence in maintenance |
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testimony of Maria Marchiori Neris
Since then it has been a long time, I was only eight years old, but from that day I will never forget the anguish I felt finding myself buried alive in the shelter under the ruins of the school of Precotto.
There were 280 children.
I remember hearing the siren of the cease-fire, all the children were gathered in the atrium of the shelter ready to go out, when the bombing began instead.
Immediately a great fuss rose up and I felt violently thrown between my companions.
Suddenly darkness and fear, everyone screamed in terror, and we did not understand what had happened.
I do not know how much time has passed, I could not see anything, when suddenly from a window, the only one left intact in the collapse, filtered a blade of light: it looked like golden dust ...
We tried in every way to call attention while outside the cries of despair from people, including those of my father, came to rescue us.
They were frantically trying to move the rubble, trying to make a way out of it and finally they succeeded.
Crushed against a wall they dragged me to that way of salvation, I was the 123rd to go out when I realized I still held, I do not know how, my folder, two liras and the collar.
The children were all saved while two janitors and a father (his name was Lecchi) were killed in the collapse of the stairs.
Squeezed in my father's arms, I heard harrowing screams, curses against those responsible for war, confusion and despair.
There were dead people scattered in the street and on the tram stopped in front of the school.
The bomb created a chasm in the middle of Monza Avenue and the tram rails looked like those of a roller coaster.
My father told me that Don Carlo Porro went into the shelter to check that everyone was safe and as soon as he came back, everything collapsed.
Other testimonies collected by the periodical "Precotto News"
n. 57 October 2014
Memories of Ferruccio Bergomi, inhabitant in Bressan street I was in the fourth grade. At one point the alarm sounds, we heard whistling the arrival of the bombs, which fell all around the school at 30-40 meters. We did just in time to take refuge in the basement. I went out among the first, the third to save, because the teacher had told the older to go on: there was a fuss that no longer ended.
We were like that, in the dark for ten minutes, full of fear, when up the window opened up and Don Carlo came to get us out, he, having seen the planes bombing, he immediately thought of coming to school to put in except for school children. I ran away trying to reach my home.
Just outside, I was struck by some gruesome scenes: in front of the school there was a huge hole with a horse on the ground, completely gutted. In Monza Avenue a tram with all the broken glass. Then in Bressan street a woman on the ground, dead, with the bread scattered for the street...
Along the way the people of the neighborhood ran towards us asking for their children. The pork butcher had a daughter of my age and asked me: "La mia Giulia... te ghè vist la mia Giulia?" Mi savevi gnent, (My daughter Giulia ... have you seen my daughter Giulia? I did not know anything). I ran home. When I got home, I realized I had forgotten my hat, and I wanted to go back. A friend of mine, a certain Matti, had taken bricks and rubble on his head and went to be treated by doctors in Rucellai street, where the Red Cross stood.
Memories of Rita Redaelli, wife of Ferruccio Bergomi In Gorla my aunt, Maddalena Redaelli, died. She was a janitor: they found her dead on the stairs, with two schoolboys in their arms, dead too.
Testimony of Alberto Mauri
In October I turned 71 years old, but the memory of that tragic day of 64 years ago is still alive in me, when my school Antonio Rosmini was destroyed by bombing. I can still see, like in a nightmare, those terrible moments that preceded the fall of the bombs on the school and the moments that followed: ... For a few minutes we were all crowded in the air raid shelter, in the basement of the school, each of us schoolchildren with their own briefcase in hand, with the teacher who was struggling to maintain discipline.None of us children was more worried than usual. Perhaps we had become accustomed to the alarms, sirens and explosions that were heard in the distance. We were joking among ourselves, as always, even when the bombing began. The hiss of the bombs falling in the vicinity was clearly clear, but we, children who were unconscious of the danger, even enjoyed imitating these hisses with prolonged whistles.
Here the hiss of the bombs is becoming more acute, stronger, closer, is a moment: a very strong roar, the lights go out, everything trembles terribly, everything shakes us, then follows a moment of profound and tragic silence. The teachers invite us to stay calm, not to move.
I do not know how many minutes I spent in the dark, dumbfounded, breathing dust. I felt a living buried, I was terrified.
Then, finally, here is a crack of light opening up there, almost on the ceiling. We all huddle against the gap of light that becomes more and more broad. I climb up some debris that had accumulated near the open passage, and still under shock, in the crowd, I drop my folder (until then I had held it tightly in my hand), on the debris, before being grabbed by more arms. Those were the arms of Don Carlo along with those of my mother, who with other volunteers had immediately rushed to the scene. Just out of the passage I see a bleak spectacle: a dazzling light, the school had disappeared, I no longer recognized the place (and yet the place should have been familiar to me because I lived a few dozen meters from the school).
Dazed and upset I immediately receive two beautiful regenerative slaps and a splash of water on my face that awakened me from a nightmare. They made me immediately lie in the rubble near because the bombardment was still going on. I do not remember anything else ...
A memory and a poem by Alberto Mauri in memory of Don Carlo Porro (November 1999)
Not only did he save my life and my companions, Don Carlo was for me a true father, a playmate, a true friend, a holy man. I still remember very well when he ran after the ball, he hid it under his cassock and did not take it away easily.He always played with us children, making himself a child too. To allow all of us children to attend the puppet theater, distributed the money to the neediest (I was among them) for the purchase of tickets for the show.
How I cried at his death. I still see him there in the open coffin with his rope and the mountaineer's ax at the back of the church ... A decade ago I mentioned him in a poem published in the Cambiago Cultural Center magazine, where I live since 1973.
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Don Carlo Porro, parish priest of Precotto, who died on August 21, 1947 in a mountaineering accident on Mount Disgrazia |
| A plaque commemorates him in the Parish of the district of Lampugnano (MI) |
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MILANESE DIALECT |
ITALIAN |
ENGLISH |
Amis di Pret, de Alberto Mauri |
Amico dei Preti, di Alberto Mauri |
Friend of the Priest, by Alberto Mauri |
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Quand seri anmò on fiolett Mè mader la me diseva con affett: "Se te voeuret andà sicur in Paradis Te devet avegh on pret per ver amis".
E mì fin da piscinin me son daa subit de fà, Tant che i primm s'giaffi hoo ciappaa dal curaa. L’era el dòn Spada in persòna, on pret esigent…
On alter pret el m’ha tiraa foeura di maceri e da la terra, Quand hann bombardaa la mia scòla al temp de guerra. Don Carlo (medaia d’òr) l’ha salvaa mì e tucc i mé amis, E poeu anca lù l’è andaa a stà mei de cà, in Paradis. |
Quando ero ancora un ragazzino mia madre mi diceva con affetto: "Se vuoi essere sicuro di andare in Paradiso devi avere un prete per vero amico".
Ed io fin da piccolo mi sono subito dato da fare, tanto che i primi schiaffi li ho presi dal curato. Era Don Spada in persona, un prete esigente...
Un altro prete mi ha estratto dalle macerie e dalla terra, quando hanno bombardato la mia scuola al tempo di guerra. Don Carlo (medaglia d'oro) ha salvato me e tutti i miei amici, e poi anche lui è andato ad abitare in un posto migliore, in Paradiso. |
When i was still a kid my mother used to say to me with affection: "If you want to be sure to go to Heaven you must have a priest for a true friend".
And i was immediately busy from an early age, so much so that the first slaps I took them from the curate. He was Don Spada himself, a demanding priest...
Another priest has taken me from the rubble and from the earth, when they bombed my school at wartime. Don Carlo (gold medal) saved me and all my friends, and afterwards he too has gone to live in a better place, in Paradise. |
A story by Silvio Mengotto dedicated to the children of the Gorla School
The diary in the Naviglio
As curious pups, the fourth grade classes walked to see the Martesana canal in the Gorla district, the last open channel of Milan, a very ancient watercourse built by the Tuscan genius of Leonardo Da Vinci many centuries ago. The euphoria of children rose like a balloon in the sky. The electric air pulsed in the eyes of all the pupils lined up for two with the teachers.
"Here is the bridge on the Martesana" cried Rebecca.
"You do not know how many times I have gone with my grandfather" she euphoricly said to her friend Veronica, curly black hair that surrounded two Egyptian eyes. The class stopped right on the two centuries old bridge. The haste, and the anxiety of writing, played a bad joke to Rebecca. The fuxia-colored diary, which she loved so much, he slipped from her hands and ended down with a pindaric flight in the Martesana canal. Splash !!!!! Have a good trip! Rebecca could not explain what happened and began to cry, but was comforted instantly by her teacher and friends.
"I do not know how it could happen" Rebecca kept saying.
The little girl was right. Rebecca could not explain why, just a moment before the diary slipped into the canal, she had felt a strange gust of wind. For a millesimal fraction of a second that tear seemed to her sweet and, at the same time, vigorous as a sudden but indecipherable message.
The children were astonished to see the fish splash around in the canal, not to mention the large nourishes that, like anomalous city beavers, slid into the water.
The class returned to school for lunch time. Crossed the bridge the teacher arrived in Piccoli Martiri Square where a high monument, depicting a veiled woman with a dead child in her arms, reminds passers-by that two hundred children from Gorla elementary school in the last war were killed by a bomb on 20 October 1944 dropped during an air raid on the neighborhood. Teachers and janitors also died with the children. After the war, a few steps from the monument, a monastery of Poor Clares was built.
The teacher noticed that, strangely, the gate of the monument was open, as if it were an explicit invitation to enter it. The whole class descended under the small crypt where two hundred flames illuminated silence and memory. Before a common prayer, even on that occasion Rebecca felt the same gust of wind, sweet and strong, warned a few moments before losing his inseparable diary full of notes and stories.
On 20 October, as has been repeated since 1944, the crowds of the district with the mayor, civil and religious authorities, celebrate a Mass in front of the funerary stone in Piccoli Martiri Square where, in large letters, we read "Here is the war". Seventy years had passed since the tragedy!
That day, in the late afternoon, the little Rebecca passed by the monument.
"Hi Rebecca, I was waiting for you" said a little girl who suddenly emerged from the memorial with a fuxia-colored diary in her hand.
"And who are you," replied Rebecca, "I do not know you."
"You're right, my name is Rosita. I saw you long ago on the bridge with all the boys and girls of your class, but you could not see me I was invisible. "
"If you were invisible why today I can see you?"
"As my two hundred friends - Rosita answered - after the explosion of the bomb we are dead and buried under a black hole incinerated by the rubble. After a few seconds we are reborn and, even though illuminated by a tunnel of blinding light, we were invisible to the eyes of men. Only on the day of commemoration we become mysteriously visible to live one day our childhood cut by violence. As you can see I still have your same age, not that of an eighty year old as the time would want & quot;
"For you then - asked smiling Rebecca - has time stopped?"
"In a certain sense it stopped in eternity - Rosita replied - but I must confess you a secret."
"What?" Rebecca answered curiously.
"We two hundred children, with teachers and caretakers, can not get away from the monument built exactly where our school stood."
"And why?" Rebecca retorts.
"Because - Rosita answered - we continue to play, read, draw, write stories, count and, like you, live the childhood that has been destroyed. It will seem strange to you, but we also build the future. Every year, in rotation, we return mysteriously visible, but if we move away from our home we return invisible ";
The Rebecca's amazement increased until she touched the blue sky she liked to describe in her stories written in the fuxia diary which, incredibly, she saw in Rosita's hands.
"You're really a special child," Rebecca said. "Tell me how you managed to get my diary?"
"The truth - answered Rosita - is that we two hundred invisible children would follow you curious, like you, to know the history of the canal that passes near our house. We were so happy to see you and, in our way, we hugged you so hard that, as sensitive as you are, you felt a strange gust of wind sweet and strong. Precisely in that fraction of a second the diary has slipped into the canal. When I saw you cry I was so moved that I dived into the canal and swimming for a mile I managed to recover it. It will seem strange to you but for this I expected you, I was sure to meet you. As a poet dear to your grandfather says "The future enters us before it happens". The future whispered that I would review you to return your precious fuxia diary. I am sure that among the written stories there will also be that of two hundred children moved with joy when, in the silence of the crypt, with your prayer you have spoken with us. Those two hundred trembling flames were moved by the waves of joy and love. Hi Rebecca, together with your schoolmates every year we will wait for you on the bridge near our house. "
